Volition explained to joystiq at pax east that Saints row 4 isnt just saints row 3.5, and that work on saints row 4 started two months before saints row 3 finished, and a splinter team went and worked on the Enter the dominatrix expansion.

"We had to go in and totally gut the [Dominatrix] story for Saints Row 4. Everything that was the missions or the story we did for Dominatrix was totally thrown out," Steve Jaros, creative director at Volition told us. "All the voice recording that we did all thrown out. We redid the entire story. The game is mission wise the same length as Saints Row 3, plus other open worlds on top of it."

and then the story goes on to say that when jason rubin joined on the agreement was to combine the saints row 4 team and the enter the dominatrix expansion into one project,

"Everyone on the team had the same concern, we didn't want to make a 3.5, we aren't making an expansion pack. What we put out to the world has to be worthy of the name Saints Row 4. I really think everyone on the team will stand behind it," added Jaros. "So much stuff has been changed and thrown out. Even the best of the [Dominatrix] stuff that we liked and pulled into the game we still changed. Nothing was drag and dropped in."

and i mean, According to Jeff and Ryans twitter, the game looks awesome, and at the end of the day thats all that i think should matter.

@believer258: It's still a current gen game, so there's only so much that can be improved visually. The content, mission structures, progression and such are harder to get across in a teaser, I'd expect.

The graphics looked hells of similar, sure, but remember saints row 1 and 2 looked pretty similar. 3 was where they took a leap up into the shiny, even more exaggerated style that whatever the updated engine was could provide.

personally i think having fans say that is very important, cause if its anyone thats gonna be super critical of a beloved game franchise it would be the fans (see the mass effect 3 blowout that happened from fans)

personally i think having fans say that is very important, cause if its anyone thats gonna be super critical of a beloved game franchise it would be the fans (see the mass effect 3 blowout that happened from fans)

and jeff and ryan are arguably THE biggest fans of saints row.

I dunno I mean they both thought Johnny V was crazy for being all hot on Saints Row coming out of E3 that year. Also, Ryan backstabbed Saints Row on the GOTY podcast.

personally i think having fans say that is very important, cause if its anyone thats gonna be super critical of a beloved game franchise it would be the fans (see the mass effect 3 blowout that happened from fans)

and jeff and ryan are arguably THE biggest fans of saints row.

I dunno I mean they both thought Johnny V was crazy for being all hot on Saints Row coming out of E3 that year. Also, Ryan backstabbed Saints Row on the GOTY podcast.

the johnny v thing was due to they didn't know what they were getting into with saints row 3, as those guys didn't really like saints row 2 that much (especially jeff,), after 3, those guys are believers :P.

cant really speak to the GOTY podcast though, especially when i did thought that skyrim was goty as well. (loved saints row 3 also!)

Too bad that that is exactly what it looked like in the trailer. Same engine, reused art and models, it was shot for shot indistinguishable from SR3 with just a few bells and whistles added (like an expansion would) like guns, abilities, new clothes etc. And I call utter and complete bullshit that all work done for Dominatrix was scrapped, there are straight up assets in that gameplay trailer that are from the Dominatrix screenshots of yore.

I really wish they just came out and said: "Yes we are doing SR3.5 essentially". Because I would be completely fine with playing more SR3.

Everything looks the same to me. They could have advertised it as an expansion and I wouldn't have blinked. I was thinking that Saints Row 4 would be getting a big graphics boost so that it could be released on both the current consoles and still have more potential in terms of graphics unleashed on the newer consoles.

This is encouraging to hear, but if there's one thing we should have learned by now it's that public demos and developer speeches don't necessarily reflect the state of the final product. I'm fairly optimistic, but I'm reserving my judgement until I get a good sense of what this game actually looks like.